


Try #21

by moondoor_majesty



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Case Fic, F/F, Set during Stranded but written before Stranded was actually released, Time Loop, so large portions of this aren't particularly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23219695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondoor_majesty/pseuds/moondoor_majesty
Summary: In which Liv, Helen, and River find themselves caught in a time loop, attempting to save Camden Market from disaster, and forced to work with a certain trigger-happy Time Lady who isn't the most pleased to have to be there, either.
Relationships: Liv Chenka/Helen Sinclair
Comments: 26
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this chapter sometime around late January or early February. And, for lack of much else to do in my current ‘at home, until the supplies run out’ state, I may as well finish it. Can’t say writing about people idly spending time in a crowded marketplace in 2020 isn’t a surreal experience, though. Even though the fic is set in both the past (late January or very early February), and in a fictional universe. But working on it again has been a fun distraction, anyway.

“I can’t believe how big this place is. None of this was here at all, that last time I lived here,” Helen remarks, as she and Liv pass through a winding brick alley packed with stalls full of clothing and crafty things, and emerge before a wall made of... well, it’s mostly made of horses. The front halves of half a dozen stallions, as if they’d tried to leap through some kind of rippling metallic substance, and been frozen mid-gallop. “Well, the buildings were here, but this part of Camden was a stable and hospital for working horses, back then... which explains the statues.”

There are more of them, in all directions. Metal smiths and steeds, and a few large horse heads, poking up from the ground. 

“Does it?” Liv wonders, staring up at them. “It almost feels like they’re looking back. I know they _aren’t_ , but, still...”

Helen can’t shake that feeling, too – like they’re being watched, through those glossy, bulging eyes.

“Secretly-alien, possibly-murderous horse statues?” Helen wagers a guess – though, she isn’t serious about it. Then again, if one of those horse halves suddenly sprung through the wall and decided it felt like eating somebody, she’d barely be surprised. Revolted, sure. But not near as shocked as the rest of the crowd here. It’d be more, ‘Oh, carnivorous horse statues that aren’t really statues – looks like we’re back to business, as usual...’

(The things she’s gotten used to, travelling with Liv and the Doctor, she swears...)

“I was thinking _trapped_ horses. Those ones look like they fell into a vat of molten... something. Iron? Carbonite?” Liv tries to ponder out. There is definitely something in their faces that looks a little pained.

Well, they _were_ probably modeled after real-life work horses.

“If you ask me, I’d bet those giant robots back there would be the first things to come to life and start declaring their desire to, oh... enslave us? Kill us? Sell us for parts?” Helen decides, indicating the towering silver androids flocking either side of the entrance to a shop called ‘Cyberdog’. “Do you think people with normal lives come to Camden Market and start speculating on which statues are probably aliens?”

“Conspiracy theorists might – or, fiction writers?” Liv offers. Helen finds herself, not for the first time today, struck by the way the bright sun casts bronze and golden lights into her hair. Same as when it had snowed, a week ago, the falling flakes contrasting vividly against the warm brown before melting – whilst Liv took the opportunity to express her slight annoyance at the fact the TARDIS had to pick the middle of _January_ to strand them all in.

Her hand weaves into the end of that plaid scarf of Liv’s, feeling the soft material against her fingers, as she grows perilously close to taking the opportunity to move even closer to her. To lean in and see what it’d be like to feel her lips against her own. 

Maybe she should, after all this time.

And yet, as Helen hesitates, she’s struck by the oddest feeling of deja vu. Deja vu on _overdrive_.

She’s done this all before.

Of course she has, Helen shakes off. It’s not as if the feeling of wanting to kiss Liv – being seconds from it, in fact – is remotely foreign. She’s wanted to for... too many months to keep track of. But no, she’s felt that urge while standing here, staring at the entrance to the Horse Tunnel Market. She’s sure of it.

As sure as she is of the realness of the other images that suddenly press into her mind.

She sees dark brick tunnels, illuminated in watery neon reflections. Before glimpsing worn Egyptian lettering, baked in strands of dusty sunlight. And then there’s an endless green flame, burning hot, consuming everything in one solid flash as it fills her vision too quickly to evade it. Always too quickly.

“Helen?” Liv voice pushes her back towards the present, and Helen can see a touch of concern in her eyes.

Helen’s also aware she’s still holding part of Liv’s scarf. She drops it. Though, Liv seems to be paying more attention to whatever’s just made Helen space out on her for who knows how long. Space out and probably look terrified.

“I just saw... I don’t know what,” Helen tries to explain, as if that counts as an explanation. Her head still feels scattered, overwhelmed – and she tries to just focus on Liv’s face. Every familiar and beautiful part of it. Grounding herself as the sensation slowly fades, along with the onslaught of images. In fact, the more she thinks on them, the less she can recall. Except there’s a rather attractive enigma of a woman with heaps of curly blonde hair, mixed up in it all. “River.”

“You saw River?”

“She’s here, somewhere. Don’t ask how, but I know... exactly where.” A picture of an alcove between a stairway and a particularly enormous horse head flashes through her memories. Helen wastes no time in turning and pulling Liv down another crowded laneway, seeking out the place she’d seen.

“I am wondering a bit about the ‘how’,” Liv questions, after a moment of rapid weaving through people and stalls.

“Well, if River’s involved, it’s probably something strange that we’ll find out about, later,” Helen presumes. It’s more of a hope. Because she knows that feeling, she’d just had. Or ones very much like it.

She’d gone so long without using those powers. Or even sensing their presence within her at all. What are they doing back, _now_? At a moment when Helen had felt more-or-less relaxed and happy, of all times.

Of course, it could be nothing to do with her. It could just be down to some rogue alien artifact or phenomenon that they’d learn all about, once they caught up with River. Logically, it was probably just that. The usual weirdness, and nothing to worry about.

The stairway isn’t far. They just reach the bottom step and head towards the shaded alcove, when the familiar zap of a vortex manipulator sounds out, accompanying the arrival of River Song. She stares back at Liv and Helen – not surprised to see them, exactly, but as if puzzling out something else. Something just slightly off.

“You’re not usually here, this quickly,” River says.

“You’re expecting us?” Liv asks. “Of course you are. Do you ever just –”

“ – Meet up with old friends by chance, without being the middle of pulling off some complicated plan to save the day? Sometimes, but not today,” River says, as if she’s said it all before. All of that, except the next thing. “Something’s changed.”

“ _Oh_ – I get it,” Liv puts the pieces of River’s strange behaviour together with Helen’s. “We’re all stuck in a time loop, that you two can remember going through before, but I can’t. I’m right, aren’t I? Do I always catch on that quickly?”

“Not always,” River tells her. She seems keen to discuss something else Liv mentioned, looking to Helen, “You can remember it, this time?”

“Parts of it. Nothing too clearly – just images, mostly. Of things I apparently see or already saw. Are you saying I couldn’t, any of the other times?”

“No. Neither of you could,” River tells them, just before breaking off in stride across the cobbled plaza. “And this is the part where I should probably fill you in on the rest of it. So, in five hours, a bomb in a flower shop goes off. Yes, that _is_ more than enough time for the four of us to defuse any simple explosive device. Except that’s not the only thing in this market that’s set to explode in around five hour’s time. There’s a second explosion, always in a different location, and no matter what we try, it’s taken four of the brightest minds in this universe twenty tries to get even _close_ to stopping it.”

“Four of us? You mean, the Doctor also gets involved?” Helen guesses at. It makes sense. They’d come here alone, just the two of them – but the Doctor was only a phone call away, elsewhere in London. If he was still back at the Baker Street place, that was just a short walk. Forty minutes, maybe?

“No, not him...” River says, bracingly.

She stops, at a particular spot between a crepe stand and an antique furniture store. Staring at a vacant bit of brick wall, like she’s waiting for something to happen any second now.

And of course, it does. With an sound indistinguishable from River’s own vortex manipulator, arrives a woman Helen knows all too well. A furied heat rises through Helen, at the sight of her. Filling Liv in, she quickly explains, “That’s the woman I told you about – the one who took me on an apocalyptic camping trip, at gunpoint.”

“Seriously? That wasn’t the answer?” The trigger-happy Time Lord with the dress sense of an Edwardian governess ignores Helen to baffle at, as she stares around at the place she apparently hadn’t expected to find herself in, again.

“You know very well, that wouldn’t be the answer,” River contests.

“Well, actually I didn’t,” she point out, feigning some kind of innocence – and making River groan in a particularly exhausted way.

“Have we tried the version where we lock you in a supply cupboard, and just solve it all ourselves, yet?” River ponders, looking very tempted by the idea. Shelving it for now, she looks back, towards Liv and Helen. “Before you ask, no, I’m not working with Missy in any _voluntary_ capacity. We both came here looking for the same item, and got trapped in the same time loop.”

“Missy?” Liv remarks, upon hearing it. “What is it, with evil Time Lords having the strangest names?”

“Don’t you want to ask what it stands for?” Missy steps in towards Liv, matching her eye to eye. They’re about the same height, with Missy’s heels giving her that slight edge. She looks at Liv for a long, curious moment. Like a cat toying with its prey. “Or should we skip past your terrible guessing skills, and play another round of Regeneration Roulette?”

With smooth ease, Missy slides a very high-tech gun out of wherever she’d holstered it, and points the barrel straight at Liv’s heart.

Oh.

The same dawning realization hits Liv, just as River intervenes - placing her hand on the Time Lord’s shoulder and firmly guiding Missy’s arm away. “For the _nineteenth time_ , you’re not doing that. Do you have to threaten to kill her, every reset? It’s pathological.”

“ _Psycho_ -pathological...” Helen utters her agreement.

“Well, I could threaten her side-kick, instead, if you like...” Missy says, boredly – while her eyes drift towards Helen.

“I’m not her _side-kick_ ,” Helen finds herself arguing.

“You kind of are. She’s the Xena, and you’re Gabrielle. Ooh, did that not turn out well, for Xena?” Missy suddenly recalls, pivoting back towards Liv, referencing something Helen _thinks_ is a television programme, but not one she’s at all familiar with the plot of. Judging by Liv’s reaction, she doubts Liv has any clue what Missy’s on about, either... aside from the obvious.

She knows Liv and the Master have a history – though, not the full extent of it, beyond the fact that both of them would probably happily and celebratorily see the other one die.

“We’re wasting time.” River sighs, evidently beyond done with all nineteen versions of this conversation she’d apparently witnessed.

“It’s a _time loop_. The one thing we have is lots and lots of time. The same time – over and over again. I could shoot all three of you, find a nice pub, and be right back where I started in five hours. Oh, no, wait - I’ve already done that. Twice.”

“Oh, that’s it –” Liv’s fist balls in a flush of fed-up anger, and in one swift strike, she aims for Missy’s face.

Missy reacts fast. Catching and blocking it before Liv can actually hit her – yet, all the same, Helen can’t help get that feeling she always does, whenever Liv does that. That feeling of wanting, very badly, to press Liv up against the nearest surface, and profoundly declare her attraction with a very thorough, lengthy kiss. And more. 

Though, now... might not be the right time for that.

She watches, as Missy rolls her eyes at Liv’s surprised reaction.

“ _Time. Loop,”_ Missy pronounces, with emphasis. “It’s like none of you get it.”

“That just proves I actually _did_ hit you, the first time. Good job, past me.” 

Of all the images that had flashed through her mind, earlier, Helen wonders why she couldn’t have seen _that_. She can imagine it, though...

“And I’ve actually killed you. Shame it didn’t stick. Though, third time might be the charm... or, is it sixth?”

“Is there a version of this where _I_ hit Missy?” Helen asks River, perilously close to doing so right now.

“Tries eight, eleven, fourteen, eighteen, and nineteen,” River recalls, fondly, before getting back to the task at hand. “And we need to get going, if any of us ever want to finally get out of here.”

They follow River deep into another part of the marketplace.

“What’s this ‘thing’ you two came looking for? It can’t be coincidence that this place keeps blowing up, right at the same time there’s something here so special that both of you want to get your hands on it,” Liv figures, as they attempt to hurry through a density of people who seem in no hurry, at all.

“It _is_ the thing that keeps blowing up,” River tells her. “The Blood Dagger.”

“Since when does a dagger blow up?” Helen remarks, before realizing they’re probably not dealing with your ordinary large knife. “What am I saying? It’s a mythical artifact or some advanced alien technology... of course it can do that.”

“The exact designs and origins of the dagger are annoyingly impossible to locate. Like they’ve been deliberately hidden,” River tells them. “All most sources have to say about it, is that if the blade isn’t regularly fed with new blood, it’s designed to explode.”

“Ingenious little invention,” Missy chimes in, with admiration. “It once decimated an entire colony planet in three weeks. Before the last remaining family found a way to disable it, rather than turn on each other. Such a pity – I had a lot of money riding on the middle brother to be the Sole Survivor.”

They reach an metal doorway, set into an alleyway and festooned with warnings to suggest anyone who enters it may be in serious risk of electric shock. There’s something else on another small sign just above the handle – a line in a language Helen can’t identify. With swift ease, River opens the unlocked door.

“What planet?” Liv wonders, as they enter into a darkened stairwell with a particularly damp smell about it, and begin to descend the long, narrow passage.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Missy shrugs off, indifferent. “They made up some story about brain-parasites in the soil turning people extra-violent, and abandoned it. Didn’t want word getting out that human nature veers towards _stabby_ , with the right incentives...”

“Orphan 14?” Liv recognizes.

“Yes, that that rings a bell. I didn’t actually _put_ the dagger there, if you’re going to get all self-righteously offended, on behalf of some people you’ve never met.”

“No, you just sat on the sidelines and placed bets while it happened. That’s so much better.”

“You should be glad I didn’t hop a century ahead, and move the game to Kaldor.”

“Out of the goodness of your hearts, I’m sure... “ Liv retorts. “Is that what you want it back, for? To carry on where you left off?”

Missy makes a non-committal noise, that suggests the thought has definitely occurred. But before they can get further into the topic of ‘why on Earth are we letting her anywhere near that dagger?’ the staircase ends, and opens up to a cavernous space, with an arched roof and brick tunnels veering off every which way. The floor beneath them is rife with puddles – Helen’s shoe unexpectedly taking in some water, as she finds herself stepping into one too shadowed to see.

“Are we in the catacombs?” Helen recognizes. They aren’t the sort of catacombs where you’d find dead bodies poking out of the walls, fortunately. They were just used for storing and moving goods, back in the days of canal horses. She thinks some of those cellar-like rooms might be old stables. “Why?”

“Does one of those tunnels lead to the cell we’re definitely going to leave her in?” Liv suggests, hopeful.

“Good luck with that. I’m armed. You’re not,” Missy reminds her.

“And, how many times have I managed to easily disarm you?” Liv returns.

“If you’re counting the time when I _let you think you did_...”

Ignoring them both, River locates a particular former-stable, with a short engraving in the same unknown language as before, carved into one of the bricks over the entrance. She places her palm to the door, concentrating on some specific thought, and a wave of illuminated energy washes over the wall. Shimmering, until the grey bricks don’t quite look solid, anymore.

River steps in, towards the wall – and passes right through. Helen follows, and finds herself someplace a far change from the still and silent catacombs. It _is_ still the catacombs – the same curved roof and pillared archways made of corroding monochrome masonry, centuries ago. But here, on this side, lies a bustling marketplace, aglow in vibrant lights and colors. A thumping melody of music with unearthly lyrics pumps out from somewhere amongst it all, and she could just as well have strolled onto another planet, in another galaxy, for all the various races of alien she can spot. There are a few Helen actually recognizes, and quite a number of people who just look human – but even more that are completely new to her.

Or are they? Because that feeling of ‘I’ve seen this all, before’ is back in a big way. She wonders if that’s just a normal sensation, for people stuck in time loops.

As River and Missy lead on past a stall selling fluorescent blue fruit the shape of tennis balls, and another piled full of what _might_ be odd spaceship parts, Helen looks to Liv.

“Have you ever been stuck in a time loop, before?” Helen asks her. The other woman had figured out the situation fast enough, after all.

“Not one that I _know_ of. But I might have. Sometimes, I think...” Liv trails off, momentarily becoming lost in thoughts of some past event in her life. Whatever it is, it’s just as soon shaken off. “Are you remembering something else, about this one?”

“Only that we’ve been here, before. You’re really not getting that weird deja-vu feeling, too? At all?”

“Well, it does feel like a lot of _other_ underground alien marketplaces I’ve been to...” Liv offers, before declining a green-skinned, ram-horned alien’s attempt to sell her on purchasing something unidentifiably deep-fried, and skewered on a stick and catching up a few paces with River. “So, what’s the plan? You obviously know what’s going to happen next.”

“Right now, the dagger should be in the hands of the Armade. A league of arms dealers from the Pandora system,” River says, for Liv and Helen’s benefit. “We know one of them purchased the dagger ten minutes ago, from a stall just over there. But we should be able to cut her off...”

“... And into tiny pieces?” Missy finishes, lighting hopefully at the idea.

“You’re not killing her,” River firmly dismisses. “Or anyone.”

“Spoilsport. Honestly, it’s like you actually enjoy all of this pointless running about.”

River sighs.

“Of course I do. When I woke up, four days ago, I thought ‘why don’t I get myself trapped in an exploding marketplace with the most infuriating Time Lord in any universe?’”

‘ _The_ most? I’m flattered,” Missy replies, but doesn’t budge from her position on the matter. “It’s not like I need your permission to kill some silly little arms dealer, anyway.”

River’s a second away from responding to this obvious statement of facts – that Missy is, well, _Missy_ , and will simply shoot and kill anyone she happens to feel like, when this time Liv intervenes. She’s spotted something – or, rather, some _one_ – moving through the lanes of stalls.

“That dagger you’re looking for... is it being carried around in something that very obviously screams ‘fancy, magic death dagger’?”

Helen sees her, too. Shrouded in a hooded black cloak (because, of course she would be) the arms dealer moves swiftly through a cluster of short grey aliens, before taking a left to swipe several disk-like objects off of another stand. Unnoticed by the man selling them. Who could either be human, or have fallen straight out of any old novel about mythic journeys in lands of elves and wizards. (Alright – he looks like Gandalf. Or, how Helen had always pictured he might look, back when she’d read _The Hobbit_ in her youth.)

In her other hand, the woman holds firm to a dagger sheathed in an elaborate amount of deep red and onyx black jewels. Helen can’t tell if the jewels are just catching the lights of the underground market, or radiating their own sort of glow. She suspects it might be the latter.

The four of them move quickly. Following River’s lead as she makes – not for the woman herself – but for a specific tunnel she seems to be moving towards.

They reach it at nearly the same time she does – but the Armade woman spots them fast, and bolts down it.

They bolt after her, down a twisting, forking series of tunnels that are too dark to see much of the floor or even walls. They can’t see her anymore, either. And, somewhere in the pursuit, Helen’s lost sight of Liv and River, too. As she glances around, and spies no one but the dim shadow of Missy close by.

Because that’s always a good outcome. Disorientated and alone, with a psychotic Time Lord. 

“You’ve ran through these tunnels at least a dozen times,” Helen realizes – with all of their experience doing this, this shouldn’t have happened. Getting separated. Losing track of the person they were chasing. “So, why are we lost?”

“We’re not. They’re the ones who are on the wrong track,” Missy says.

“That doesn’t make any sense, either. River knows exactly what she’s doing.” Helen presumes, anyway. Then again, there is the fact that River quite likely hasn't slept in four days. 

“Yes – and, at this point, the fact that there are Armade, plural, after that dagger becomes apparent. Keep up. I thought you were supposed to be at least, oh, _vaguely_ intelligent?”

“Well, sorry for being suspicious of the fact that person with a habit of kidnapping me has lured me down a dark tunnel.”

“Yes, _I_ lured _you_. By following behind you.”

There’s movement up ahead, suddenly. A fleet of footsteps – just one set, it sounds like – and instinct has Helen rushing ahead after the sound. Unsure what she’s actually going to do, once she catches up with someone who’s armed with a dagger that both stabs _and_ explodes, but running on hope and adrenaline all the same. It’s what Liv would do, probably.

She barely gets more than a few paces, before there’s a blinding flash of bright light, the sensation of Missy’s hand shoving at her shoulder, pushing her sideways – and when Helen next opens her eyes, she finds herself staring out at someplace that is definitely _not_ a cramped dark catacomb.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... I feel like this entire chapter can be summed up as, 'how to make four highly intelligent people somehow manage to make the situation WORSE, in the span of less than thirty minutes'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I forgot to mention in the last chapter, but I don’t remotely own the concept of an alien marketplace somewhere within Camden. That came about because of a line in a Class tie-in novel (The Stone House, by A.K. Benedict.)

Well, it looks like some _kind_ of cavernous, underground structure, that Helen’s suddenly found herself in. Chunky tan rocks make up most of the high walls, separated by lines of carefully-craved bricks that run right up to the ceiling, and appear to be etched in hieroglyphics. One symbol per brick.

There’s an almost-smothering amount of heat, to the room. No doubt aided on by the flaming torches set into sconces on either side of a wooden door, across the room. And another pair, flanking an archway just behind her.

And just beside that archway is Missy, who’s leaning rather casually against an enormous statue of Anubis. Lit in a stray ray of dusty sunlight that’s come in through one of several cracks in the stone ceiling above.

“What did you do?” Helen immediately presumes the woman to be the cause of all of this. Not that it isn’t an _interesting_ sort of place to find herself in – she felt a familiar flicker of awe, to be honest. Awe and curiosity. Were they in the past? The future? A distant galaxy?

Still, not exactly the company she’d have chosen...

“You think _I_ brought us here?” Missy replies. “That I really wanted to spend the next hour of my life playing Indiana Jones with someone who won’t get the reference?”

“We’re suddenly in an Egyptian tomb of some kind, and you’re the one with the vortex manipulator.”

“And did you hear a vortex manipulator? Feel yourself getting _vortex manipulated_ somewhere?” Missy points out. Because, come to think of it, Helen hadn’t. She knew what that sort of time travel felt like, and this hadn’t been anything like that. It hasn’t been anything like... anything, really.

“Well, if you didn’t bring us here, who did?” Helen wonders. She moves closer to the nearest run of hieroglyphs. There’s something distinctly off about them. Some of them are easy enough to translate. But a good number of them are completely unfamiliar. “And where are we? Another planet? A secret chamber buried beneath the secret marketplace?”

“Oh, no – we haven’t moved.” Missy says, is if just recalling she’d forgotten to mention that fact. “We’re still exactly in the place we were standing, a minute ago. Well, I’m standing. You’re... _less_ standing.”

“Yes, I remember you pushing me,” Helen recalls. At the time, she’d almost-hopefully wondered if Missy were shoving her _away_ from some impending danger. As unlikely as that probably was. “So, what – this is all in our heads? Some kind of dream or shared hallucination?”

“A video game,” Missy says. “And don’t ask me to explain what one of those is.”

“I know what they are,” Helen says, shortly. She had been living in 2020 for three weeks, after all. Mind you, she’d never personally had the experience of playing one and was mostly just guessing as to how they worked, but... Missy didn’t need to know that. “So, if you’ve been stuck in this ‘video game’ before, what next?”

Missy doesn’t budge from her recline against the statue, as she instructs, “take two steps forward, and one to the left.”

Helen begins to comply – treading onto the first two of the large stones tiling the passage between here and the door, like a checkerboard of different shades of grey and brown. She’s about to move onto the last one Missy mentioned, when she stops, an uneasy feeling washing over her, complete with an image of the stone cracking to pieces beneath her shoe. Of all the stones around it quickly following suit, and before she knows it, falling without a hope of anything to cling onto.

“And, the way through this place that _isn’t_ going to send me to my death?” She looks back at Missy, on to her.

“Alright, have it your way...” Missy utters. “Take a step to your _right_.”

She does.

And regrets it, instantly.

She feels the ground give way, for real this time. Letting out a yelp of shock that’s that’s as useless as any hope she has of not being impaled by the many, many stone spikes revealed below.

But yet... that also doesn’t happen.

She’d only started falling, when suddenly she’s back where she started, again – standing by the archway and, Helen glances down to see, completely fine. Physically, anyway.

“You did that deliberately.” Infuriated, she turns towards Missy. “Those tiles were both rigged, and you knew it.”

Her anger seems to amuse the Time Lord, more than anything.

“Well, look on the bright side – at least now you know you’re not really going to die in here, are you?”

“You could have _told_ me that.”

“And miss the look on your face?”

“You know what? I don’t need your help,” she decides. She’d given her a chance, and look how well that had gone. It always did, working with people like her. Thinking that they might, for one moment, be able to refrain from acting like a murderous lunatic. “There has to be a perfectly logical, obvious way through here...” 

It was a game, after all. A puzzle meant for people to solve. The floor didn’t just give way at random. There had to be a pattern, and clues to that pattern...

Like the fact that the bricks with the hieroglyphs on them were the exact same array of colors as the tiles before her. That had to be the key.

* * *

“Not siding with the Master, here – but can’t you just shoot her on stun?” Liv shields her head and ducks as another burst of rubble comes flying out from the wall above her, raining chunks of brick. They’ve chased the Armade woman into a different stretch of market floor, only to be pinned down as the woman in the cloak keeps tossing what appears to be an endless supply of small grenades back towards Liv and River. So far, they’ve only struck a few walls and pillars that Liv hopes aren’t load-bearing. They get about two more feet, before having to dodge another small explosion. “Or, in the arm?”

“Love to, but it doesn’t work,” River explains, pulling Liv to a sheltered spot between two since-abandoned stalls. One of them seems to be slightly on fire, right now – a handful of weathered scrolls smouldering above them. Burning scorch marks into the metal. “Any time I fire anywhere near her, she drops the dagger and it unsheathes.”

“And, that’s bad?” Liv guesses it must be, somehow. Enough so to keep River from doing anything with that rather impressive gun of hers.

“Re-sheathing it requires a precise combination of input codes that I haven’t had enough tries of this to figure out, yet,” River explains, chancing a peek up at the woman who’s now casing around to see if she’s still being followed. “Our best bet is to acquire the dagger before anyone unsheathes it and starts the clock.”

“So, what, we wait until she lets her guard down somewhere, and swipe the dagger?”

Right now, she looks nowhere close to doing that. Throwing another orb in their general direction, for good measure. It strikes a rack of clothing, which instantly go up in flames.

“That’s one idea... Track her to a crowded pub up above. Pull off a nice and subtle lift. Watch as you try not to look so obviously impressed at how good I am at pick-pocketing... as I make _no_ effort to hide how much I enjoy it when you look at me a _bit_ like you’re looking at me, right now,” River toys with the proposed plan, alight with a glimmer of that inescapable charm of hers. A charm heightened further by how little space there is between them, right now, and Liv wonders – _did_ something happen, in some other go of this? Or is River just being... River? Before she can get too lost along that train of thoughts, the woman in front of her changes tracks. “But, we tried that, three of the last times. It doesn’t work.”

“Alright... you said she drops it, whenever you fire at her?” A new plan comes to mind. “So, let’s work with that.”

Assuming River is on the same page – and, she looks like she is – Liv sneaks out from their spot. Careful to evade the Armade member’s sweeping gaze, as she darts between stalls and stands.

She watches, from beside a hanging of large rugs with moving star charts stitched upon them, as River unleashes a shot at a bit of shop signage to the woman’s left, drawing her attention.

As if timed to the second, River lands a second stunner right square at the cloaked woman. Her grasp on the dagger falters, and Liv swoops in to catch it in mid-air.

“Well-done,” River admires, approaching.

“I’ve done that before, haven’t I?” Liv realizes. She doesn’t want to know how many times they’ve tried that and _not_ succeeded – because that’s probably happened, too. She looks at the sheathed knife in her hand. Tucked safe in whatever’s apparently keeping it from blowing up. That, or turning the whole planet into a battle for survival.

“Yes,” River admits. “Not that it’s any less – oh, for...”

With a fortunate grasp still on her gun, River takes aim at something or someone just behind Liv – the heat of the blast soaring close to the side of her face.

Two more figures in cloaks have arrived on the scene. Other Armade, probably. River fires again, this time hitting the one she’d missed. He falls, right as the other one darts out of sight.

“Apparently, Missy _couldn’t_ take care of them...” River notes, scanning the market for the last remaining conscious Armade member, ready to fire at any sight of him.

Liv wonders where the hell Missy _is_ , actually. And Helen. The fact that both of them are missing doesn’t scream ‘this totally a good sign’ to her.

There’s movement, just outside of a bookshop fashioned from one of those old stables. With sharp precision, River downs him fast, cloak fluttering as he falls.

She’s just made the mistake of thinking that’s it, that’s probably the last of them – when Liv feels someone behind her grasp the dagger she’d been keeping a careful hold of, and pull back hard on the handle. Casing a sharp pain to dig into her palm, as the blade separates from the sheath before she has time to stop it.

Holding only the bejeweled sheath now, she turns see River now with the barrel of her gun pointed at the forehead of a short young man with beady jet-black eyes and skin the color of an unripe tomato.

“Give me _one good reason_ why I shouldn’t,” River threatens, looking livid.

“You – you can have it back?” He offers, presenting the dagger with shaking hands.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” River takes the blade back, but doesn’t let up. “Do you know what this is? Besides some shiny old relic, you thought you might pawn off to some equally ignorant buyer?”

“I saw you snag it off that one, there.” He gestures at the still-unconscious woman, a few feet away. “Then shoot some other ones. Figured, yeah – worth a bit, with all that bother. But you can have it. It’s all yours. I don’t want it.”

He bows out, backing away with his hands held out in some sort of ‘please, don’t shoot me’ gesture.

River drops her aim, finally, deciding the idiot isn’t worth it, and he scarpers.

“We were so close,” she looks to Liv, exhaustion heavy in her eyes. “We’ve never been that close, before.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she assures, placing her free hand on River’s shoulder. “We have the dagger, and the sheath, and... four and a half hours, maybe, to work it out? We’ve been in worse spots.”

She has a look at her other hand, and finds it’s bleeding about as much as she thought it might be. Because _that_ had been a great way to hold the dagger. Really expert job, there.

River runs her sonic over the blade, for a moment. “We have less than _one_ hour.”

“I thought you said it took five?”

“No... the flower shop bomb goes off in five hours. The dagger goes off at different times, depending on how long it’s been since it’s been fed.”

“Well, an hour’s not bad. Practically ages, compared to most ticking time bombs I’ve come across.” She does get an idea, though – a way to put a few more minutes on the clock, if she’s right. “But, let’s see if I can’t buy us more time.”

Carefully, Liv presses part of her palm to the flat side of the cool metal. At once, the blade seems to glow – the air around it pulsing in an eerie, hungry sort of way. She waits, then lifts her hand. Watching as a falling drop gets absorbed into the metal as soon as it hits. River slides the knife away, and gives it another scan. “One hour, thirty-six minutes.”

“Just from that?” She could spare a bit more, if such a small amount of her blood can get them an entire half-hour. Not that she’s exactly thrilled about the prospect of being _on tap_ to some kind of vampiric piece of weaponry. Really, if there’s a better plan here, she’d love to hear it.

“It hasn’t fed in a while. It’s still waking up. But I have a feeling it might start craving a main course, soon.”

“ _Craving_ – you’re talking like it’s alive,” Liv catches, peering at the blade before them.

“It is, in a way. Sooner or later, it will start calling to whoever’s holding it. Trying nudge them along into getting what it wants,” she explains.

“It can possess people too, now? Great. So glad we’ve acquired something that’s going to turn us all into unwilling murderers.”

“Or very willing, depending on how you look at it,” River supposes, then further elaborates. “It only works if you already, secretly, on some level actually want to do it. Let’s just say, it might not be a good idea for you to be holding it, around Missy.”

“Or it might be,” Liv considers. Not seriously, but still – it’s not like the Master has ever bothered with showing things like restraint. Decency. Any shred of a redeemable quality. Never mind the fact that their latest regeneration was currently who knows where – possibly doing who knows what, to someone Liv cared everything about. “If she’s done something to Helen...”

“Helen’s fine,” River assures. She checks the time, on her vortex manipulator. “Getting her Lara Croft on, at the moment.”

“Her what?”

Having absolutely no idea what River meant, she finds a spare bit of clean-looking cloth to wrap her injured hand with, for the time being, and lets the other woman lead on towards wherever she knows Helen to be.

They step into another darkened passageway between the two open market halls, only this one isn’t so dark as the one she and River had come through. There’s a flickering, blue-ish white light, casting over the bricks and puddles, and they follow it around a bend to find a small black disk projecting up a ray of light, and a strangely frozen scene surrounding it. 

There’s Missy, looking as if she were in the process of turning away from the light. Arm shielded up and eyes wincing close to shut. And then Helen, who Liv rushes towards, down on the ground – arms bracing her fall, and staring straight at the running beams of what Liv recognizes, up this close to it, as computer code.

Despite her efforts to rouse her, Helen doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink. Those blue eyes staring locked in place, at the light.

“What’s wrong with them?” Liv asks. Her fingers brush over Helen’s cheek, wishing the other woman would just _respond_ , in some way. She feels normal, though. Warm, from running through the tunnel. And she is breathing.

She wonders if Helen can see her, or sense that she’s here, at all. Her hand leaves her face, and drifts down to find a spot atop one of Helen’s own.

River crouches to join them by the disk device.

“It’s a trap, left by our friendly Armade. Projecting a virtual reality into their minds. It’s not dangerous – just time-consuming.” She picks up the disk and decides to have a poke at it, with her screwdriver. “Ordinarily, they work their way through a series of cliché death traps, find the treasure at the end, and wake up to meet us back up in the pub, half an hour from now. But this time, we just don’t have the time for that.”

* * *

“That floor puzzle was one thing, but how is anyone supposed to get through _that_?” 

They’re in the second room, now. Now that she’d understood it, evading any of the wrong tiles had been easy enough. But this room – between the bursts of flame shooting out of vents in the walls every half-second, and the swinging sets of blades that don’t look wide enough for a cat to slip through, this one might be more of a challenge.

“Oh, _now_ you want my help?”

“If you’re actually going to help.” As soon as the words are out of Helen’s mouth, there’s a guttural, grinding noise from above. The roof just above this safe patch of stone begins to descend, rapidly, like some impatient incentive to push them along before they can formulate a proper plan. “Oh, for crying out loud... you know, I don’t think any of the Egyptologists I knew had to make their way through places like this.”

They slip through the first jut of fire, just in time. And the second. And third. And fourth.

The grinding noise sounds again, and sure – of course, now _this_ section of ceiling is intent on crushing them to death.

“I swear, if you’re even _thinking_ of pushing me into those –” Helen warns the Time Lord beside her, as the pendulum of blades whiz by, close enough blow a breeze through the fringe of her hair.

* * *

“Oh, come on – you’re a Trichlorian gaming device. I’ve met high-security vaults easier to crack, than you,” River berates the stubbornly _still on_ disk, after a few unsuccessful blips of her sonic screwdriver. She changes the settings to a different frequency, and keeps at it. “Of course, they wouldn’t even be trapped at all, if Missy could just remember we’re all supposed to be on the same side, here.”

“Is that actually that likely?” Liv glances past Helen, at the stationary Time Lord. It doesn’t take much to figure out what happened, here. That Missy meant to thrust _Helen_ towards the VR-thingie, and escape off on her own.

“I’m really starting to wonder...” River admits. There’s a few more pointed buzzes, and at last the stream of light retracts back into the device.

As soon as it does, Helen snaps back to life. Possibly _not_ expecting to find herself suddenly sitting on the floor, staring into Liv’s eyes. The surprise of it quickly fades, though – replaced by a warm sort of smile.

“Well, you’re a better sight than those blades,” she says, regaining her bearings. She looks over at Missy, as Liv helps her up. “Though, I am a bit curious how we ever made it through, all the other times...”

“Bit of lucky timing. _Lot_ of trial and error,” Missy tells her.

Helen sighs. “Remind me never, ever, to get stuck in a _real_ trap-filled tomb, with you.” She looks back at Liv, whose arm still lingers around her waist, and over towards River. Spying the dagger poking out of one of River’s pockets. “What did we miss?”


	3. Chapter 3

They regroup in a busy pub, on the topside. Because what better place to bring a powerful alien device that’s liable to either explode or start egging on their worst impulses, any moment now?

If _Try #21_ to solve this thing winds up being a complete write-off, Liv wouldn’t be that surprised. In fact, she’d probably put money on it. That, in a few hours time, she’s just going to forget all of this ever happened, and find herself standing in front of a wall full of metal horses, staring far too much at Helen’s lips, right before it all kicks off all over again.

At least they know where they went wrong, and what to do differently in the 22nd attempt. Things like ‘next time, don’t let _anybody_ get trapped in a computer game for half an hour’. And especially, ‘next time, pay more attention to how you’re holding the all-important dagger, and _less_ attention to what an impressive shot River Song is.’

Right now though, River seems determined to figure out how to turn the sheath back on; the two items laid before her on the small wooden table they’ve secured, and a look of absolute concentration on her face as her sonic attempts to compute any possible solution.

They’ve been here long enough to order food, and still nothing. The gems remain dull and lifeless, no matter what River tries.

“This is probably too simple to work,” Helen ponders over an idea, stealing one of Liv’s yam fries in the process. “But if that thing doesn’t necessarily need human blood to keep it from going off, then couldn’t we just find a butcher’s? Most of them sell pig’s blood – for puddings, and things.”

“Puddings? What kind of weird puddings do you make?” Liv remarks – though, she’s probably not one to have a go at someone else’s culinary skills. Given that she’s proved she can do about two things, in a kitchen from this era – food that tastes like survival, and food that’s entirely cooked in a microwave. Sometimes, those are also the same thing.

“I didn’t say I _liked_ black pudding... just that some people do, and the ingredients are easily acquirable.”

“Unless you plan on slaughtering the squealer yourself, it won’t work,” Missy chimes in, reaching across the table and taking one of the chips she is definitely _not_ welcome to. “The dagger needs live blood.”

“Volunteering, are you?” Liv replies. Evidently seeming just a little too into the idea, as she catches Helen’s glance. “What? She can _regenerate_ – ”

“And I’m not doing it for your sake. I’ve grown rather attached to this face,” Missy immediately rebuffs, leaning back against the booth to relish the petty acquisition of lukewarm sweet potato dipped in chipotle sauce. Her eyes flicker down, towards the hand Liv’s been favoring. “Besides, it looks like it’s already got a taste for you. _I_ wouldn’t want any of that, if I were it, but...”

River interrupts her, before she can continue. Before either of them can continue along that line, looking up for the first time in several minutes.

“Can we all just agree that nobody at this table is getting _sacrificed to the dagger_?”

“Nobody at _this_ table?” Missy repeats, taking in the full array of other booths and tables packed with lunch-goers. As well as those lingering over by the bar. “I can work with that...”

“If you really feel like having a mass-slaughter at Dingwalls, be my guest,” River tells her, with growing aggravation. “Maybe, it’ll give me a minute to actually concentrate, so that when this blows up in my face yet again, I’ll know how to key it in right the next time.”

“Can I have a look at it?” Helen offers, after a pause.

River gladly passes the dagger and sheath over towards the other person among them who’d managed to earn a living deciphering strange old artifacts.

For a moment Liv just watches her. There’s something so captivating, about the way Helen looks when she’s puzzling out some hidden bit of code. Looking for the patterns of a language, maybe, somewhere in all the jewels and intricate etchings.

It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, when Liv feels a tug at her other side, and finds herself being urged out of her chair by a set of hands that appear to belong to Missy.

“What?” She wants to know, when the woman lets go of her, a little ways away. Back at the table, she can see that Helen and River are discussing something, though she can’t make it out through the music and chatter all around them. “What are you up to?”

“Who says I can’t pull my least-favorite person aside, without being up to something?”

“Me. And also, anyone who’s met you.”

“I just wanted to point out, that as exciting as it is to watch two people with doctorate degrees take all of eternity to locate an ‘on’ switch, there’s still that matter of the _other_ bomb,” Missy tells her.

“So, go deal with it. And stop stealing my chips.” Figuring Missy knows perfectly well how to disarm the thing and doesn’t need her help, Liv moves to head back towards the table, but pauses in her tracks. “Wait, why _is_ there some random bomb in a flower shop?”

“I figured that might pique your curiosity...” Missy says, as if hesitating on the edge of revealing the answer.

“And I figure you’re not telling me _why_ , so that I’ll come with you into an exploding shop,” Liv point out. She can’t see how that could possibly end well. “I think I’ll pass, actually. I’m curious – but I’m not suicidal.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. You know, I've realized something. I don't say a lot of nice things about you. But between you and me," she begins, sliding in close to Liv, as if she's on the precipice of an uncharacteristic compliment."You _are_ very, very good at making people want to shoot you."

She shakes Missy loose.

“Was that supposed to convince me? Come with you or you’ll shoot me right in this pub?”

“Not me – I was talking about the person _you’ll_ be distracting while _I_ disarm the bomb,” Missy explains.

“Oh, loads of fun, then. Getting shot at in a shop – next to a psychotic Time Lord with a bomb.” Liv steals another look back at the table. Helen and River are trying, so hard, to make sense of that thing in time. "Alright, I'll help - but I'm doing it for them, not you. And if you try anything - _anything_..."

Missy shots her a withering look, but resigns to her terms. "I'll be on my best behavior. Kaldoran Mountain Scout's Honor."

She holds up three fingers in mock-gesture.

"You know that's not a _thing_...?" Liv tells her. To her knowledge, there is no such organization on her planet. "Or a thing _you_ could swear on, if it were." 

Nonetheless, they quickly depart Dingwalls and step out into the breezy river air of the narrow lock.

The shop in question isn’t far, at least. Just a little ways down the canal. And doesn’t appear to be open – the sign flipped to the ‘closed’ side, and the lights all off inside. Though, the lock is not much of a match for Missy. (It wouldn’t have been for Liv either, she’d like to think – even if it might have involved a few more careful kicks to a weak point, than some blipping of a small device Missy pockets away, just as quickly.)

Aside from the multitude of floral arrangements covering almost every available bit of floor, table, and counterspace, the shop’s front is empty. The same can't be said about the back room. The door to it is ajar, and she can hear someone moving around.

As soon as they’re through, they see him – a tall, scruffy man in a gardener’s smock, bent over what’s unmistakably some sort of home-made explosive device. And he sees them too.

“Don’t mind us – just here to disarm that bomb you’ve just made,” Missy tells him, casually strolling down the nearest aisle between two of the many long tables. Tables stocked full of greenery. Not just tulips and roses and other normal, earth things. But also a lot of flora that seems to _register_ their presence. Twisting in their pots to have a glance at the two unfamiliar arrivals. Leaves wavering like vipers waiting to strike – and at least a few of the plants _do_ have rows of gnashing teeth in their buds.

The strange plants are a thing to notice for another time, though – because, as it turns out, the florist _does_ mind their arrival here. Quickly drawing out a gun that is definitely not from earth, either. At least, not from this time period.

“Stay where you are,” He orders, giving the weapon a certain pointed thrust. When they ignore him, he fires out a shot that just misses them; shattering an orchid right out of its ceramic.

“Who the hell are you, and why are you trying to blow up Camden Market?” Liv asks, darting away from another blast. More terracotta bursts to pieces. “Because I have news for you – it’s probably going to happen anyway, in about half an hour. You’re wasting your time.”

He seeks after her, leaving Missy free to sneak in closer to the bomb. Just as planned.

“The dagger cannot be burned by its own wake,” he claims, as if he’s reciting some line of prophecy. Or a very ceremonious warning label.

“This is about that stupid dagger?” Of course it was. It seemed like every unscrupulous person in the galaxy had gotten news that it was here, for one day only, at Camden Market. “And you’re... trying to destroy it?”

“This is the only way,” He insists, with another shot in Liv’s direction. She ducks behind a cluster of thick-trunked, palm-tree looking things in the corner of the greenhouse, and the round breaks a small ornamental gnome to her left instead. “The only way to rid the universe of what it does. To planets. To people.”

“It’s really not. If you’re prepared to sacrifice an entire marketplace full of people – people who have no idea what that dagger even is, or why they’re dying for it - then you’re no better than it,” she tells him. He hasn’t fired on her for a solid five seconds, now. Maybe she’s getting through to him. Cautiously, she emerges. “We’re _on the same side_. We want to get rid of that dagger, too. Stop it from killing anyone else. Right now, two of the smartest people I know are working on a way to shut it off, again. And they _will_ succeed.”

“And how long will that last?” He questions. Still with his finger on the trigger, she can see. Maybe, giving up her cover wasn’t such a good idea. “How long before it gets free, and another planet like mine falls to it? _No_. I will not let that happen.”

He fires, but she’s able to dodge beneath the blast, and it hits the tree behind her. The trunk convulses, and a rain of tiny golden particles shower down from the broad leaves. Liv finds herself unintentionally inhaling at least a few of them, as she stands.

A little ways behind him, she can spy out that Missy has clearly finished with the bomb.

“You know, for someone so set on blowing everyone up, you’re paying an awful lot of attention to _me_...” she starts, pausing to blink some sort of odd, yellow and blue spots out of her vision. They don’t really go away. “And not a lot of attention to person who’s just disarmed your precious bomb.”

He wheels around, in time for Missy to deliver one precise blast of her own – looking almost bored by the task. Though, satisfied enough, as the man falls and the life fades out of him.

“You didn’t have to kill him.” Liv moves back towards Missy. Was the floor _also_ moving? What the hell did that plant drop on her?

“No, I would have much rather stood there and watched him kill you,” Missy considers. “But unfortunately, the version of this where you get shot dead in a greenhouse and I go on my merry way _isn’t_ the version of this where I get to walk out of here not still stuck in a time loop.”

“My selfless hero...” Liv remarks, gripping to one of the tables just to keep her balance. Everything in front of her eyes looks distorted, somehow – rising in and out of focus.

“Feeling a bit woozy, dear? Seeing colors that aren’t there?”

“Like you care. I just need...” Her hand accidentally knocks some kind of cactus to the floor, as she fights to stay upright and conscious long enough to get outside.

Her knees give way, but she doesn’t join the uprooted plant. Instead she finds herself being caught and supported by Missy. Which is just weird.

“You’re a tough one to keep alive, today,” Missy tuts, guiding her towards the greenhouse’s back door.

“Not like you to bother,” Liv mutters, breathing in a welcome bit of fresh air as Missy unloads her against a crate by the wall. Slowly, the world starts to look a bit more normal, and she can feel her strength regaining. “Really, why did you bother?”

“Do you always thank people so rudely?”

“I do when they’re you.” She looks up at Missy, knowing there must be something more to it. “I bet you hate the fact that I apparently have to be alive for all of this to work.”

Missy doesn’t appear to be paying attention to her, anymore. She’s turned away, peering at a rise of rectangular planters set up near the other brick wall. Feeling up to it, Liv joins her at them.

“Seriously – what kind of idiot builds a bomb within fifty feet of a tempora-spore plant? I should have shot him just for being a complete waste of a brain.”

“What do those do?” They’re small, with narrow branches and many drooping, delicate-looking flowers. Every so often, the pale blue bulbs exhale a breath of glimmering silver dust.

“A lot of things you wouldn’t understand.” The dust drifts up in the air for a moment, then makes a beeline for Missy’s vortex manipulator. She shakes the cloud away. “ _Get off_.” The glimmering particles back up, but continue to hover near her wrist. Circling in wait. “Basically, they don’t like dying, and keep insisting Rivs and I keep them from getting blown to flower bits.”

“So, the Master’s been forced to save the life of a flower?” Liv sums up, finding this latest development quite amusing. “I can’t wait to tell the Doctor, about this...”


	4. Chapter 4

“These have to mean something,” Helen thinks, pondering over the series of swirls and jags etched deeply into the metal in her hands. “If I were rushing to build a device to stop an explosion, I wouldn’t waste time decorating it for no reason.”

Helen pauses to have another drink of tea – hoping the caffeine might help stir some brilliant revelation about _what_ that reason might be. They have a distinct, ‘definitely to do with alien tech’ air about them – but no real signs of any pattern that indicates some attempt to communicate anything.

“Of course...” River leans in, towards Helen and the sheath, and makes a curious sweep of her sonic screwdriver over both halves of the puzzle. Whatever she discovers, it makes her positively beam. “A duel activation key. Oh, I could kiss you.”

“Alright.” Her desire to take River up on that offer comes out just a bit too quickly, and eagerly. “Wait – why?”

To demonstrate, River picks up the dagger and runs the tip of it along one of the engravings, between two of the dull black gems. With her other hand, she points the sonic at that exact spot. In a moment, the two jewels begin to glow. And then they fade again, as soon as River lifts the dagger away. “Right _idea_ , wrong order...”

“So, what’s the right order?”

If River says anything, it’s drowned out by the distant pulse of blaster fire. Barely loud enough to hear, really, through the cacophony of the pub. But it resonates, somehow. Pulling Helen away from the table, the dagger, and River Song.

She’s in a greenhouse, now – glass roof, brick walls. Rushing across the dirt and pottery strewn tile, until she spots something that tears her heart in its tracks.

 _Liv_.

She’s still – too still. Is she even breathing?

Helen crouches down, trying to rouse her, but she can’t.

She feels something hot touch against her forehead, and finds herself in the canalside pub, again. The lamp above them shattered and sputtering sparks. The table, too, is wet with a mix of tea, coffee, and ale – all four cups and glasses in pieces.

How in the..? Had that been _her_ doing?

Oh, it doesn’t matter.

Breathing heavy, her mind a whirl, Helen’s up and towards the front doors in a flash. All she knows, right now, is that she needs to get to Liv. Before it’s too late, and if that’s even possible.

Just outside the doorway and wondering which way that greenhouse even is, she feels River’s hand stilling against her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“I saw Liv, in some greenhouse. I don’t know where, but I don’t think _...” that she was alive_ , is what Helen can’t quite bring herself to say. It’s one thing, to hear that they’ve all apparently been dying over and over again, for four straight days. Seeing, it, though – seeing the woman she loves... she can hardly bear it. It has to have been a past version of events, Helen rationalizes. Some failed attempt. In reality, in _this_ reality, Liv has to be okay. She just... has to be. “Is that what happened, the last time?”

“Yes,” River tells her. “It did. But right now, Liv is completely fine. Missy swore –“

“And you trust her?”

“I trust that she wants to get out of here, just as much as I do.”

Helen rakes a hand back through her fringe, taking a moment to compose herself. To get her thoughts back on track – as calmly as she can manage. Taking slow, deep breaths. Watching the dull waves rock the longboats on the other side of the railing. It’s been a long time, since she’s lost control like that. She’s lucky it were only a light fixture, and some dishes.

“I really thought they were gone – those powers Caleera gave me,” Helen says, leaning into the frigid metal.

“Was _that_ what that was?”

“You didn’t know?” All of these days, with River and Missy, in Camden Market – had that really been the first time they’d shown themselves? 

“I had no idea,” River answers, honestly.

“So, the last time – when it all happened for real, I didn’t -?” Helen asks her, a bit surprised.

“If you did, I didn’t see it,” River explains. “By the time I got there, you were both dead.”

“What? How did _I_ die?”

“The dagger. Someone felt like buying themselves more time.”

“Let me guess – Missy?” It does seem like something she _would_ do.

“Who knows? It could have been. Or else one of the Armade. We... lost the dagger for a bit, the last time,” River admits, adding to the utter mess of Try #20. “But there I was, with the two of you gone, and a handy reset button only a few feet away from me...”

“You blew everything up all over again... for us?”

Ordinarily, Helen’s not sure how she would feel about that. Then again, they’re hardly dealing with ordinary circumstances. But she is touched, that she means that much to River. That they both do.

“And I’d do it, again. Missy knows I would. A world without Helen Sinclair and Liv Chenka hardly bares thinking about.”

Helen finds herself smiling at her, as the wind whips up at them with particular force. It really is freezing, out here. Even if the woman beside her practically radiates with her own sort of heat.

“I suppose we do have an exploding dagger to get back to,” Helen brings up. She can see that River has brought it with her, and wonders how much time they have left. “If Liv really is alright...”

“Ask her, yourself.” River’s gaze shifts, to a spot somewhere behind Helen. She turns, to see Liv and Missy arriving down a concrete pathway beneath the drooping green boughs of a willow tree. Just as River had told her, Liv looks completely fine, and not at all like someone who’d just been fatally shot. She does look a little like someone who’s just been dodging about a lot of potted plants while being shot _at_ , though.

Still, Helen rushes up the slope – pulling Liv into a tight embrace, the second she can, taking Liv by a bit of surprise.

“Missed me did, you?” Liv chimes, though, she doesn’t seem in any hurry to let go of her, either, as Helen’s arms drop to a more casual hold around her waist. Her eyes search Helen’s, and take in the small burn marks on her forehead, as well as the general air of great relief. “Are you alright? Has something happened?”

“Oh, just another fun vision of something horrible, in a different timeline,” Helen says – because thank you very much, apparently-still-around powers, time loop deja vu, or _whatever_ had decided throw that at her. She moves to brush a stray bit of fern out of Liv’s hair. “Just, _try_ not to die in this one?”

“Managing it so far – barely,” Liv says. “Have you figured out that sheath, yet?”

“One thing, but it’s still...” Helen trails off, noticing, for the first time, that the tree they’re standing under is unusually, well, leafy, for this time of year. Lush with pale green. Some of the longer strands just coming short of touching her head. “Does this tree seem right, to you? For winter?”

“What tree?” Liv wonders, looking about. As if it isn’t incredibly clear which tree Helen means.

“The one we’re standing under...?”

“We’re not standing under anything,” Liv seems quite sure about. And just a little concerned that Helen isn’t on the same page. “Is this another of those visions?”

Well, if she’s suddenly started hallucinating willow trees, that was possible. But no – no, it’s real. If she reaches up, she can feel the rough bark and smooth leaves slide against her hand. Then again, everything in those memories felt real enough, too.

“No – I think Helen’s the only one who _is_ seeing what’s right there, in front of us,” River decides, stepping in towards the trunk. “Not expecting that, were you? You tried, I’ll give you that. Had it set to work on humans, Gallifreyans, even me...”

“And, in Try Twenty-One, River Song loses what’s left of her mind, and berates a imaginary tree,” Missy observes, watching the archeologist slowly circle what must, to her, appear to be a spot of thin air. “Is anyone getting this on film?”

“It _is_ there, you just can’t see it,” Helen insists, then can’t help add, given that bloody camping trip of theirs, “Is that really so unusual? I figured you’d be used to me knowing things you don’t.”

“Oh, I know it’s there,” Missy says, witheringly. “I just think she looks ridiculous.”

River carries on, at the tree.

“... Set to work on everything you know we are. Except of course, that little thing you didn’t. I imagine you probably don’t have a setting on your perception filter for ‘humans with lingering amounts of transferrable psycho-psionic abilities’, do you? Well, maybe you’ll make one, next round. Because you’ve been doing the same loop as us, all these days. Tempora-spores do love a time ship.”

“Time ship? Are we staring at an invisible TARDIS?” Liv wonders.

“Not a TARDIS – but it can hide like one. A perception filter _and_ a cloaking device? Someone doesn’t want to get caught. Not while they can just sit back and watch us do their work for them. Making sure we never _do_ get to just skip out of here, without solving it.”

“That man, in the market...” Liv realizes.

“Exactly.”

At that moment, Helen notices the willow sort of shimmer, as the leaves shift to resemble ones that are brown and close to dropping.

“... And, now they’ve changed the leaves to _fall_ ,” Helen narrates, for the benefit of the others, before addressing whoever’s inside. “Do you actually think that making your ship resemble a different, completely wrong season is going to make me forget that I can see you?”

She feels a sort of tingling sensation, just then, that Helen’s grown all to accustomed to mean ‘prepare to find yourself somewhere brand-new, in the blink of an eye’.

Which of course, she does. It looks like the hollow of an enormous tree. Bright screens and keypads and other glowing controls are set into every available spot in the damp, dark bark.

“And dimensional engineering, too! The Time Lords could practically sue for copyright,” River says, marvelling at the ship’s interior. It isn’t _that_ much bigger on the inside, compared to being in a TARDIS – but it’s enough to comfortably accommodate the four of them, plus two others, who are busy doing something at one of the larger screens. “But then, I suppose you would have more than enough to pay them, if what you’re doing here goes to plan.”

The two men turn to face her. One short and youngish, with something of a very _tomato_ like look about his full, reddish face... and the other is, um, well, it’s a tall badger in a ratty old military frock.

Apparently, Helen isn’t the only one a little surprised by the six feet of grey and white fur, before them. 

“ _What_ are you?” Missy baffles, stepping in towards him. “You’re not one of that strange lot who worship The Wind and the Willows, are you? Because _that’s_ bonkers, even to me.”

“The name’s, er, Lance... Freelancer,” The badger says, in a gruff tones that seem, on second thought, oddly fitting, for a talking badger.

“Lance Freelancer? Well, that doesn’t sound made-up on the spot, at all,” Missy replies.

Liv takes in ‘Lance’ the time travelling badger, but aims the most of her ire at the one she recognises. “You’ve been making us mess up, on purpose? I knew that bit with you just giving us back the dagger was too easy.”

“ _Did_ you?” Missy contests, dubiously.

“You didn’t even want the dagger. Not any more. You want the key code,” River calls them on. “Sure, you could sell a super-weapon to some reckless criminal. Buy yourself a nice luxury planet, with the profits. But the real money, the ‘five stellar systems in my name, and a high-end space yacht wrapped in gold’ – that’s in you swooping in with the solution, and seeing how much people think their lives are worth.”

“Yeah, so? We’re still saving ‘em,” Lance counters, arms crossed in defiance. As if he believes he’s being relatively decent, all things considered.

“At a price! What you’re doing isn’t charity, it’s extortion,” River tells them, circling in behind Lance and the other man – moving in front of the large screen, as she continues to go on at them. “Making people pay to you to be their _personal shield_. Never mind, what that’ll do to the timeline. There are times I think I might be causality’s worse nightmare, but _you_ – I can count about _ninety-four_ different catastrophic changes to our reality, right now.”

As Helen watches, she notices that River’s eyes keep flickering, just subtly, past Lance.

Lance huffs. “And I can count how many seconds of _this_ go you’ve just wasted, going on about it.”

“I know. Terrible habit. I don’t know _who_ I could have picked it up from...” River comments. Behind her back, her fingers very discreetly press into a few spots on the screen. “It’s almost as bad as the old, ‘watch me distract you with it, while I reconfigure your controls’.”

Lance budges her aside to have a look. And laughs, when he sees what she’d been attempting to do. “You think you’re gonna steer us off the planet? Not likely, with those spore-things messing up the systems. This ship has a much chance of getting off-world right now, as you do.”

“Oh, well. Can’t blame a girl for trying...” River resigns to the defeat. Quite a bit _too_ easily, to be believed. Out of the corner of her sight, Helen spies Liv doing... something... but continues looking at River, so as not to give it away.

Missy edges in between River and the badger, swiping the dagger-in-sheath right from River’s pocket.

“You know, _I_ like this whole scheme,” she tells Lance. “Tell you what. You two dump whichever of you is dead weight, and cut me in on it. You do deal in some actual form of currency? Because ‘ten points to Hufflepuff’ might cut it to some folks, but not to me.”

“Points to what?” Lance wonders, his face furrowing between the beady eyes.

“Honestly, the audience I’m dealing with, today... can’t one of you just read a book? Buy some Netflix?” Missy despairs. Beside her, Helen feels Liv’s hand urging her sideways, and silently follows her lead. “On second thought, I could just spend a few seconds moving a bit closer to the door... show off this snazzy little bomb I found... and do _this_.”

It happens quickly. No sooner has Missy unpocketed a glowing, pulsing orb of light, than she’s tossing both it and the dagger high in the air. It’s a rush for the door – but all four of them make it outside. As do the overlarge badger and the human tomato.

The precise second they’re clear of it, she can see a force field spring up, around the tree. And then everything inside the field erupts into a burst of orange and green flames. Whirling around, then finally dying out.

“My ship!” Lance cries – staring at the destruction before them. There’s absolutely nothing left of the willow tree. Just a pile of smoking soot and embers. “This isn’t over.”

“The dagger and the bomb just blew up together, inside a powerful force field,” River states the obvious. “I think we’re through, here.”

“We heard you, before –” All of a sudden, Helen feels herself being jerked backwards. She struggles, but his accomplice is remarkably strong. “We kill either one of them, you call a re-do.”

“With what? That bomb is useless,” River tries to reason. And Helen prays he feels like seeing reason – because there’s a knife pointed towards her chest, now. A very ordinary one – but also not one Helen really wants to see suddenly driven into her. “Killing her right now would just be pointless spite!”

“ _Let her go_ ,” Liv warns, despite the fact that Lance had now trained a shiny old pistol of his straight on her. One small twitch of his paw away from firing.

“Maybe it is a bit of ‘pointless spite.’ Maybe it’s not. Guess we’ll see.” He pulls the trigger.

At that same moment, Helen sees a glint of silver rise, and feels the tip of the blade just barely touch her skin. She feels it – and defies it. Defies _all_ of it.

The knife shatters to dust. The bullet as well.

The shorter man is stunned enough for Helen to wrench herself away from him, as a blast from River’s gun falls him. Close by, she can hear the audible sound of Liv’s fist connecting with Lance’s snout. He drops.

She is _really_ good at that...

While Helen moves closer to Liv, Missy eyes Helen with a keen bit of interest.

“Neat trick – can you put weapons back together, or just take them apart?” She casts a glance back toward the smoking pile of wreckage that probably contains scattered bits of Blood Dagger. Likely regretting having decided to just cut her losses and blow it up.

“What do _you_ think?” Helen all but rolls her eyes. And, even if she could – she wouldn’t.

“Alright, just checking...” Missy joins them near the badger. Stooping down closer to Lance, scanning over his unconscious form. “Now, I can’t decide... a throw-rug? A cumbersome bit of taxidermy? Or, spare the effort, and just drop him in a nice sun?”

“Missy...” River starts.

“A not-nice sun? You did see that part where he was about to kill the Doctor’s pets?” She picks up the revolver he’d dropped, and gives it a twirl. “And, if anyone here gets the pleasure of shooting Liv Chenka, it should definitely be me.”

And of course, her next move is to point it back up towards Liv, closing one eye to peer through the sight, for accuracy.

“Could play a drinking game to ‘how many times someone points a gun at me, today’, couldn’t you?” Liv comments, to Helen. "Then again, could probably do that most days."

There’s a particular blip of sound, from Missy’s vortex manipulator – drawing her attention towards it, instead.

“But, I may have to save _that_ throwback for another time... up ya get, Mr. Badger.” She heaves Lance onto his feet, as he dimly starts to stir. With a few swift taps on her vortex manipulator, she’s gone.

Leaving just Helen, Liv, River, and another unconscious man in the middle of a crowded lock of people who... couldn’t care less about anything that’s just happened. Strolling on by, and carrying on with their meals and shopping and those photos of themselves that people from this era love taking with their phones.

“Is it just me, or is absolutely no one paying any attention to the fact that there was just an explosion, a hostage situation, and strangely-dressed woman disappearing into thin air with a half-conscious badger-man?” Helen wonders at.

“I should probably get going, too, before the perception particles fade,” River tells them. She sweeps a hand up through the air – and, if Helen concentrates, she can see a sort of _luminescent_ quality to what could easily be mistaken for dust or insects, hanging in the sunlight around them. It must have spread, in the explosion.

Struggling a little with the weight of him, River gathers up the other man, who isn’t even close to being awake yet.

“What are you going to do with him?” Helen asks.

“I’m not sure. But he must be wanted for a bounty, somewhere.”

A hesitant moment hangs between them – it always sort of does, whenever River’s about to leave.

“See you around?” Liv finally bids.

“Hopefully, very soon,” River tells her. Then adds, with a wink towards Helen. “You can buy me that drink you owe me.”

And then she’s gone, too.

“What did she mean by that?” Liv looks to Helen, quizzically.

“Nothing – really, nothing,” Helen swears.

She leads them out of the fading cloud, and down the canal – to a slightly secluded spot, before she can’t really contain it any longer, and her lips surge against Liv’s. Moving with such intensity – such need, that she quickly finds more than reciprocated, in the way that Liv starts kissing her back.

“I’ve been wanting to do that, all day,” she admits, when they briefly part. _All year_ , if she’s being fully honest. She thinks she’s known Liv at least a year by now, probably? And yet, it also feels like a lifetime.

“Me too,” Liv answers, and it’s not long before she finds herself being pulled back in. Her lips part, seeking out more, and it’s like _galaxies_ unfolding, before her. Held between them – and Helen could gladly keep on feeling this, forever.

Still, her minds drifts towards what happened, just a few minutes ago.

“You’re not going to tell him, are you?” Helen wonders. Already missing the lack of Liv’s tongue against her own.

“About us? I reckon he’ll just figure it out, on his own. Eventually. In a year or two...”

“Not _that_ – I mean, about my abilities...”

“It’s not my place,” Liv answers. “But if _you_ want to, he will understand.”

“Like he did so well, the last time?” She knows she may be being a little unfair – he had come round, in the end. Finally stopped fretting, in that annoying way he thought she didn’t notice. Still, he has enough on his plate, as it is. “The last thing I want to do is give him something else to worry about.”

“Are you worried? That they aren’t as gone as you thought they were?”

“It’s hard to say.... on the one hand, they were a bit useful, today. And, at least I’m no longer seeing the Ravenous, whenever I use them... but, losing control of them. It’s terrifying. Overwhelming.”

That last time hadn’t been so bad, when she was focused on saving their lives. But the other moments, when Helen didn’t even know she was using them... when she hadn’t meant to, at all. As much as she tried to tell herself and everybody else that she wasn’t a threat, deep down... deep, deep down... sometimes, she wondered.

She feels Liv’s hands, finding her own. So much warmth, in such a small gesture.

“I imagine it would be. But you’re the most incredible person I know. Powers or not. You’ll figure it out. And, I’ll be here for you, whatever you need,” Liv tells her, her thumb riding against Helen’s skin. Just before a certain glimmer of some new thought spreads through her face. “Ooh – I have a girlfriend with superpowers. I feel like I’m in some film.”

“They’re not _superpowers_...” Helen tells her, but finds herself laughing, despite it all. And then she recalls that _other_ part of the what Liv had just said. “Girlfriend?”

“If you want?” She looks up at her, hopeful, and Helen answers her by virtue of another rather long kiss. The kind of one that says, _yes, I really do_. And apparently prompts Liv to ask, they second they break, “Are you going to buy _me_ a drink?”

She knows Liv is only teasing – still, there’s something so _beguiling_ about her, that Helen finds herself suddenly taken up by the idea.

“Somewhere that’s not in this market,” Helen says. As interesting as this place is, she thinks she might have had about enough of it, for now. “And, you have to buy me one, too.”

Their hands slide back together, as they seek out the exit – wherever that might be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note of 'not my own concept' - the Wind and the Willows worshipers that Missy references are from another Big Finish audio, Blood on Santa's Claw.
> 
> But here we have an ending, alas. Thanks for following this thing, in all its daft glory.


End file.
